INTRODUCTION

1. Politics, Elevation And Bumper Stickers In Morgantown, West VirginiaBy: Jenni Lee, Phillip Oliver, Mary Emily Stonebridge And Andrew Stawarski • ABSTRACT • RESULTS • DISCUSSION / CONCLUSION We found no relationship between elevation and political views. Almost all of the political bumper stickers were either liberal in nature or nonpolitical. Most contained nonpolitical agenda such as points 42,44 and 46. The stickers with political overtones were ones of peace and “freeing our minds” as shown in examples 50 and 53. A minority of the stickers contained specific political overtones such as point 51 which is a number of USA troops holding a flag saying “Halp Us Jon Carry – We R Stuck Here N Irak” which is a blatant parody at Senator John Kerry. Another example is point 60 which both political and non political overtones. One of the stickers is promoting the Application Trail and the other is a “Don’t Tread on me” flag which gained its fame during the American Revolution. Our study is of the South Park neighborhood located in Morgantown West Virginia. We theorize that with increasing elevation comes a change in political views. This is rationalized by the notion that the higher in elevation you go the more expensive the property is. The political views of bumper stickers will be our catalyst for trying to explain this. Also lower sections of the neighborhood should have more stickers than the higher areas. . The lower income areas had surprisingly low bumper stickers. This could also have been do to the low population of college students that are missing during the summer months. Our results show no political change due to elevation. This could be explained by a few factors. The largest factor could be time of day. We collected our data in the mid afternoon when most people would be at work. Another factor is time of year, data was collected during summer and considering Morgantown is a college town this can play into the validity of our data. One way of correcting this is to change the time of our data collection to the beginning of the week while school is in session. We can also receive more accurate data by collecting it in the early morning hours or in the late evening hours when most people are resting for the work day ahead of them. • INTRODUCTION Morgantown West Virginia was first settled in 1772 by Zaquill Morgan. The first plot of land went on sale in 1785. It is from Zaquill Morgan that the town was named, www.morgantown.com. The Town really boomed as a mining town. During the 1900s the area known as South Park was established by the wealthy and middle class during the boom in the early 1900s, Bartlett 2000. The average income of the area is still average for the middle class, cert. US Census 2000. • METHODS Point 42 Point 44 Point 46 The group was equipped with a GPS unit and digital cameras. The GPS was used when bumper stickers were found during the walk. The surveyed area was a two block radius, one block above Route 7 and one block located below Route 7 Notes and pictures of every bumper sticker were also taken. In the lab the GPS coordinates were imputed into Google Maps for creation of the map and analysis. Point 50 GPS Map Link Point 51 Point 53 Point 60 • MEAN INCOME • REFERENCE Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr. Nancy Hoalst Pullen, and Dr. Jay D. Gatrell for letting us have the opportunity for this trip and project. References Figure 1 : http://www.census.gov/ Bartlett, David A “EXPLORING SOUTH PARK, MORGANTOWN, WV: ACCESSING HISTORICO-GEOGRAPHICAL MATERIALTHROUGH THE INTERNET http://appalachia2009.wikispaces.com/file/view/Bartlett_D_Thesisop.pdf (Accessed July 24, 2009) www.morgantown.com Figure 1. US Census Data Cert. 2000